Ancient Mediterranean: Colonial Encounters and Imperialism
Presentation
This course will examine the nature and complexity of interactions between the regions of the Mediterranean during the second and the first millennia BC. This is a particularly complex phenomenon both archaeologically and historically, since it is related with a great deal of political, social and linguistic diversity. What is clear, is that the cultural florescence of the Ancient Mediterranean civilizations had its origins in a series of colonial entanglements beginning first in the eastern Mediterranean. Minoan and Mycenaean communities began to establish links with Egypt and the Near East in the first centuries of the II millennium BC. From then, over a period spanning more than two thousand years, and ending with the Roman conquest, colonists, merchants, sailors and conquerors sought to benefit from the commercial and cultural opportunities provided by the riches of the eastern, central and western Mediterranean.
The cumulative effects of the contacts between colonists and native populations was to have profound effects on the subsequent development of the cultures of the Mediterranean. During the II and the I millennia BC the indigenous societies underwent an important set of transformations, increasing social differentiation and an accelerating urbanization that was to have multiple and profound effects in all spheres of life. Collectively, it is the cumulative effects of these culture contacts along with the changes and continuities that accompanied their presence, that are implicated in the making of ancient Mediterranean.
In order to shed light on the nature of these colonial encounters, and to situate them within the larger context of trans-Mediterranean cultural and commercial relations, the course will identify a number of themes so as to isolate some of the most important political, economic and societal processes underpinning native-colonial dynamics.
Schedule of Lectures
1: The Mediterranean basin: conquest, commerce and navigation.
2: Minoan and Mycenanean palacial civilizations.
3. Phoenician Colonies in the Western Mediterranean.
4. Origins and cultural developments in ancient Etruria.
5. Tartessus, orientalising civilization of Southern Iberia.
6: The emergence of the Greek polis.
7: The establishment of Greek settlements in the Mediterranean.
8: Indigenous Societies of the Western Mediterranean: The Iberian cultural mosaic.
9: The Mediterranean in the third century BC: Carthage and the Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean.
10: The Romanization of the Mediterranean
Bibliography
Balmuth M., Gilman A., and Prados-Torreira L., eds. (1997). Encounters and Transformations: The Archaeology of Iberia in Transition, 170 pp. Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 7. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. [The papers included in this volume cover the Iberian peninsula and the Balearic islands from the Neolithic through the historical periods, providing an overview of current debates in (western) Mediterranean archaeology.]
Barker G. (1981). Landscape and Society: Prehistoric Central Italy (Studies in Archaeology), 281 pp. London: Academic Press. [This study presents an excellent overview of Italian prehistory with particular attention to matters of subsistence and to settlement in its physical landscape context.]
Braudel, F. (1972). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., 642 pp. New York: Harper and Row. [Perhaps the richest socio-geographic volumes ever written on the Mediterranean. Volume 1 contains descriptions and discussion of the Mediterranean environment, climate, topography, demography, and economics, whilst Volume 2 is more concerned with the historical sequences.]
Broodbank, C. (2000) An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades, 352 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Comprehensive, dynamic and key new study on island archaeology throughout the Mediterranean, with more specific emphases on the Cyclades.]
Chapman R. (1990). Emerging Complexity: The Later Prehistory of South-East Spain, Iberia and the West Mediterranean (New Studies in Archaeology), 304 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [This study focuses on southeast Spain in the Copper and Bronze Ages with special emphasis on the emergence of social inequality; it also discusses the wider western Mediterranean to provide comparative evidence.]
Cherry J. F. (1981). Pattern and process in the earliest colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 47, 41-68.
Cherry J. F. (1990). The first colonization of the Mediterranean islands: a review of recent research. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3, 145-221. [Two specialized articles (see item above) that deal exhaustively and definitively with the earliest exploitations, settlement, and colonization of the Mediterranean islands.]
Horden, P., & Purcell, N.(2000) The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, 761 pp. Oxford: Blackwell. [An exhaustive new study of Mediterranean ecological history, with relevance for all time periods although focused on Iron Age-Medieval.]
Huskinson, J. (ed) 2000: Experiencing Rome. Culture, identity and power in the Roman empire, London: Routledge.
Renfrew C. (1972). The Emergence of Civilization: The Cyclades and the Aegean in the Third Millennium B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [The best known and still one of the most dynamic studies of the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyclades.]
Sherratt A. G. and Sherratt E. S. (1991). From luxuries to commodities: the nature of Mediterranean Bronze Age trading systems. In N. H. Gale, ed. Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean. G�teborg: P. �str�m's F�rlag, 351-386 (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 90). [Detailed empirical and theoretical attempt to model the nature of Mediterranean Bronze Age trade. Emphasis is placed on 'conspicuous consumption' and exchange rather than on staples and agrarian production.]
Mediterranean Archaeology Websites and Links
Ancient Near East: http://www.ancientneareast.net
Comprehensive portal site with information and useful links concerning the archaeology, ancient history, art and religion of the region.
Classics and Mediterranean archaeology: http://classics.lsa.umich.edu
Vast number of links to websites concerning projects, texts, sites, etc. Use the search tools rather than scrolling down the list.
Interactive Mediterranean Project: http://iam.classics.unc. edu
On-line atlas of the ancient Mediterranean. Clear and helpful downloadable maps (blank or labelled).
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